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Your support makes all the difference.Rangers. .1
Celtic. . 1
DESPITE a number of injuries on both sides, only one player was making an Old Firm derby debut - experience is all-important on these occasions. So it was perhaps not surprising that the new boy, Andy Payton, was one of the quietest players in a dauntingly noisy Ibrox Park. Payton was full of running, but never quite caught up with the pace of the game.
'Breathtaking,' the former Middlesbrough forward called it afterwards. Payton's Scottish education has been a crash course in fast football. His first appearance the previous weekend, he said, was faster than anything he had played in, and the Glasgow derby was 'twice as fast as that'.
'There's another side to football up here. Down south you could get away without working so hard,' Payton said. 'I find it a lot better quality up here, too. I think players down south underrate it.'
If anyone was equal to Saturday's speed, it was Paul McStay. A colourful, more creative version of Stuart McCall, the industrious controller of the Rangers midfield, McStay structured Celtic's sophisticated build-ups which, for the first half, matched Rangers' aerial approach.
Any hints of sophistication from Rangers vanished early in the second half, after they went behind to Gerry Creaney's short-range half- volley. The ensuing air raid kept Celtic pinned in their own half and brought to life one of the contests of the match, Mark Hateley versus Tony Mowbray, head versus head. Mowbray mostly came out on top, despite carrying a
10-stitch midweek head wound, though he was as helpless as the rest of Celtic's defence when the substitute, Ian Durrant, fired through their disarrayed midst to equalise with 20 minutes to go.
Rangers: Goram; Ferguson, Robertson, Gough, McPherson, Brown, Steven (Durrant, 61), McCall, McCoist, Hateley (Mikhailichenko, 81), Huistra.
Celtic: Marshall; Boyd, Galloway, Grant, Mowbray, McNally (O'Neil, 61), Miller, McStay, Payton (Slater, 79), Creaney, Collins.
Referee: J McCluskey (Stewarton).
Celtic were replaced - on goal difference - by Aberdeen at the top of the Premier Division, after the Dons recovered from a goal down to beat Dundee 2-1 at Pittodrie. Aberdeen have invested pounds 850,000 in their new strike force - and Duncan Shearer and Mixu Paatelainen did the business with a goal apiece to take their joint tally to nine this season. Dundee's early opener came from a less expensive source: the 6ft 5in Gary Patterson, 22, signed last week from Lochore Welfare, a Fife junior club, for pounds 1,000 plus a set of tracksuits.
Tucked in behind Aberdeen and Celtic, also on seven points, are Dundee United, who overcame St Johnstone, also 2-1, in a bruising Tayside derby at Tannadice, with goals by Paddy Connolly and John O'Neil. The visitors' Allan Moore and Duncan Ferguson of United were both sent off, and will miss this week's Skol Cup quarter-finals.
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